yaminay chaudhri

nomadism practised by populations that move from one part of the forest toanother, by the Arawak communities who navigated from island to island in theCaribbean, by hired labourers in their pilgrimage from farm to farm, by circuspeople in their peregrinations from village to village, all of whom are driven bysome specific need to move, in which daring or aggression play no part. circularnomadism is a not-intolerant form of an impossible settlement.

contrast this with invading nomadism, that of the Huns, for example, or theconquistadors, whose goar was to conquer lands by exterminating theiroccupants. Neither prudent nor circular nomadism, it spares no effect. It is anabsolute forward projection: an arrowlike nomadism. But the descendants of theHuns, Vandals or Visigoths, as indeed those of the conquistadors, whoestablished their clans, settled down bit by bit, melting into their conquests.Arrowlike nomadism is a devastating desire for settlement.

Neither in arrowlike nomadism nor in circular nomadism are roots valid.Before it is won through conquest, what 'holds' the invader is what lies ahead;moreover, one could almost say that being compelled to lead a settled way of lifewould constitute the real uprooting of a circular nomad. There is, furthermore, nopain of exile bearing down, nor is there the wanderrust of errantry growingkeener. Relation to the earth is too immediate or too-plundering to be Iinked withany preoccupation with identity - this claim to or consciousness of a lineageinscribed in a territory. Identity will be achieved when communities attempt tolegitimate their right to possession of a territory through myth or the revealedword. Such an assertion can predate its actual accomplishment by quite sometime' Thus, an often and long contested legitimacy will have multiple forms thatlater will delineate the afflicted or soothing dimensions of exile or errantry.

In western antiquity a man in exile does not feel he is helpless or inferior,because he does not feel burdened with deprivation - of a nation that for himdoes not yet exist. It even seems, if one is to believe the biographies of numerouscreek thinkers including plato and Aristotle, that some experience of voyagingand exile is considered necessary for a being's complete fulfilment. plato was thefirst to attempt to base legitimacy not on community within territory (as it wasbefore and would be later) but on the city in the rationality of its laws. This at atime when his city, Athens, was already threatened by a ,final'deregulation.

In this period identification is with a culture (conceived of as civilization),not yet with a nation. The pre-christian west arong with pre-ColumbianAmerica, Africa of the time of the great conquerors, and the Asian kingdoms allshared this mode of seeing and feeling. The relay of actions exerted by arrowlikenomadism and the settled way of life were first directed against generalization(the drive for an identifying universal as practised by the Roman Empire). Thus,the particular resists a generalizing universal and soon begets specific and local

7 2 / / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

tenses of identity, in concentric circles (provinces then nations). The idea ofelvilization, bit by bit, helps hold together opposites, whose only former identityexisted in their opposition to the Other.

During this period of invading nomads the passion for self-definition firsteppears in the guise of personal adventure. Along the route of their voyagesconquerors established empires that collapsed at their death. Their capitalswerrt where they went. 'Rome is no longer in Rome, it is wherever I am.'The rootls rrot important. Movement is. The idea of errantry, still inhibited in the face ofthis mad reality, this too-functional nomadism, whose ends it could not know,does not yet make an appearance. Centre and periphery are equivalent.Conquerors are the moving, transient root of their people.

The West, therefore, is where this movement becomes fixed and nationsdeclare themselves in preparation for their repercussions in the world. Thisfixing, this declaration, this expansion, all require that the idea of the rootgradually take on the intolerant sense that Deleuze and Guattari, no doubt,nleant to challenge. The reason for our return to this episode in Western historyis that it spread throughout the world. The model came in handy. Most of then.'ltions that gained freedom from colonization have tended to form around anidea of power - the totalitarian drive of a single, unique root - rather thanaround a fundamental relationship with the Other. Culture's self-conception wasclualistic, pitting citizen against barbarian. Nothing has ever more solidlyopposed the thought of errantry than this period in human history whenWestern nations were established and then made their impact on the world.

At first this thought of errantry, bucking the current of nationalist expansion,was disguised 'within' very personalized adventures - just as the appearance ofWestern nations had been preceded by the ventures of empire builders. Theermntry of a troubadour or that of Rimbaud is not yet a thorough, thick (opaque)experience of the world, but it is already an arrant, passionate desire to go.rgainst a root. The reality of exile during this period is felt as a (temporary) lackthat primarily concerns, interestingly enough, language. Western nations wereestablished on the basis of linguistic intransigence, and the exile readily admitsthat he suffers most from the impossibility of communicating in his language.The root is monolingual. For the troubadour and for Rimbaud errantry is avocation only told via detour. The call of Relation is heard, but it is not yet a fullypresent experience.

However, and this is an immense paradox, the great founding books ofcommunities, the Old Testament, the lliad, the Odyssey, the Chansons de Geste,the Islandic Sagas,the Aeneid or the African epics, were all books about exile andoften about errantry. This epic literature is amazingly prophetic. It tells of thecommunity but, through relating the community's apparent failure or in any

Glissont//Poetics o, ReldtioniTT3

case its being surpassed, it tells of errantry as a temptation (the desire to goagainst the root) and, frequently, actually experienced. Within the collectivebooks concerning the sacred and the notion ol history lies the germ of the exactopposite of what they so loudly proclaim. When the very idea of territorybecomes relative, nuances appear in the legitimacy of territorial possession.These are books about the birth of collective consciousness, but they alsointroduce the unrest and suspense that allow the individual to discover himselfthere, whenever he himself becomes the issue. The Greek victory in the Iliaddepends on trickery; Ulysses returns from his Odyssey and is recognized only byhis dog; the Old Testament David bears the stain of adultery and murder; theChanson de Roland is the chronicle of a defeat; the characters in the Scgas arebranded by an unstemmable fate, and so forth. These books are the beginning ofsomething entirely different from massive, dogmatic and totalitarian certainty(despite the religious uses to which they will be put). These are books oferrantry, going beyond the pursuits and triumphs of rootedness required by theevolution of history.

Some of these books are devoted entirely to the supreme errantry, as in theEgyptian Book of the Dead. The very book whose function is to consecrate anintransigent community is already a compromise, qualifying its triumph withrevelatory wanderings.

In both L'lntention po€tique (Poetic lntention) and le Discours antillais(Caribbean Discourse) - of which the present work is a reconstituted echo or aspiral retelling - I approached this dimension of epic literature. I beganwondering if we did not still need such founding works today, ones that woulduse a similar dialectics of rerouting, asserting, for example, political strengthbut, simultaneously, the rhizome of a multiple relationship with the Other andbasing every community's reasons for existence on a modern form of the sacred,which would be, all in all, a Poetics of Relation.

This movement, therefore (one among others, equally important, in otherparts of the world), has led from a primordial nomadism to the settled way oflife of Western nations, then to Discovery and Conquest, which achieved a final,almost mystical perfection in the Voyage.

In the course of this journey, identity, at least as far as the Western peopleswho made up the great majority of voyagers, discoverers and conquerors wereconcerned, consolidates itself implicitly at first ('my root is the strongest') andthen is explicitly exported as a value ('a person's worth is determined by hisroot'). The conquered or visited peoples are thus forced into a long and painfulquest after an identity whose first task will be opposition to the denaturingprocess introduced by the conqueror. A tragic variation of a search for identity.For more than two centuries whole populations have had to assert their identity

74I/THEORETICAL E'RAMEWORKS

ln opposition to the processes of identification or annihilation triggered by these

lnv.rclers'WhereastheWesternnationisfirstofallan.opposite,'forcolonizedteopt., identity will be primarily 'opposed to' - that is' a limitation flrom

ihe beginning. Decolonization will have done its real work when it goes beyond

lhls limit.Thedualityofself-perception(oneiscitizenorforeigner)hasrepercusstons

f,n one's idea of the other (one is visitor or visited; one goes or stays; one

conquers or is conquered). Thought of the Other cannot escape its own dualism

ulltii the time when differences become acknowledged. From that point on

thought of the other 'comprehends' multiplicity, but mechanically and still

takirlgthesubtlehierarchiesofageneralizinguniversalasitsbasis.Acknowledgingdifferencesdoesnotcompelonetobeinvolvedinthedialecticsoftheirtotality.onecouldgetawaywith:.IcanacknowledgeyourdifferenceAttclcontinuetothinkitiSharmfultoyou.IcanthinkthatmystrengthliesintheVovage(IammakingHistory)andthatyourdifferenceismotionlessandsilent''Another step remains to be taken before one really enters the dialectic of totality'

And,contrarytothemechanicsoftheVoyage,thisdialecticturnsouttobeclriven by the thought of errantry'

Let us suppose that the quest for totality' starting from a non-universal

context of histories of the West, has passed through the following stages:

- the thinking of territory and self (ontological' dual)

- the thinking of voyage and other (mechanical' multiple)

- the thinking oferrantry and totality (relational' dialectical)'

Wewillagreethatthisthinkingoferrantry'thiserrantthought,silentlyemerges from the destructuring of compact national entities that yesterday

Were Still triumphant and, at the same time, from difficult, uncertain births of

new forms of identity that call to us'Inthiscontextuprootingcanworktowardsidentity,andexilecanbeSeenaS

beneficial, when these are experienced as a search for the other (through

circular nomadism) rather than as an expansion of territory (an arrowlike

rromadism).Totality'Simaginaryallowsthedetoursthatleadawayfromanything totalitarian.

Errantry, therefore, does not proceed from renunciation nor from frustration

regarding a supposedly deteriorated (deterritorialized) situation of origin; it is

not a resolute act of rejection or an uncontrolled impulse of abandonment'

Sometimes,bytakinguPtheproblemsoftheother,itispossibletofindoneself'Contemporary history provides several striking examples of this' among them

FrantzFanon,whosepathledfromMartiniquetoAlgeria.Thatisverymuchtheimageoftherhizome,promptingtheknowledgethatidentityisnolonger.o-pl"."lywithintherootbutalsoinRelation.Becausethethoughtoferrantry

Glissant//Poetics of Relation/i/75

is also the thought of whar is relative, the thing rerayed as welr as the thingrelated' The thought of errantry is a poetics, which always infers that at somcmoment it is told. The tale of errantry is the tale of Relation.In contrast to arrowrike nomadism (discovery or conquest), in contrast to thesituation of exile, errantry gives-on-and-with the n.g"iio, of.r"ry pore andevery metroporis, whether connected or not to a conqueror,s voyaging act. wehave repeatedly mentioned that the first thing exported by the conqueror washis language' Moreover, the great western languages were supposedry vehicularlanguages, which orten took the prace or; ;;"i;;ffio.ir.tion, incontrast, is spoken multiringually. Going beyond the impositions of economicforces and curturar pressures, Reration rightiury opposes the totaritarianism ofany monolingual intent.

At this point we seem to be far removed from the sufferings andpreoccupations of those who must bear the world,s injustice. Their errantry is,in effect' immobire. They have never experienced the merancholy andextroverted ruxury of uprooting. They do not travel. But one of the constants ofour worrd is that a knowredge of roots will be conveyed to them from withinintuitions of Reration from now on. Travering is no longer the locus of power butrather a pleasurable, if privileged time. The ontological obsession withknowledge gives way here to the enjoyment of a relation; in its elementary andoften caricarturar form this is tourism. Those who stay behind thrill to thispassion for the worrd shared by all. or indeed they may suffer the torments ofinternal exile.I would not describe the physical situation of those who suffer theoppression of an other within their own country such as the bracks in southAfrica, as internal exire. Because the sorution here is visibre and the outcomedetermined; force alone can oppose this. Internal exile strikes individuars livingwhere solutirons concerning the rerationship of a community to its surrounaingsare not' or at reast not yet, consented to by this communiiy as a whore. Thesesolutions, precariousry outrined as decisions, are still the prerogative of only afew who as a resurt are marginarized. Internar exire is the voyage out of thisenclosure. It is a motionress and exacerbated introduction to tie thougnt oferrantry' Most often it is diverted into partiar, pleasurabre .o.p"nr.tio* inwhich the individual is consumed. Internal exile tends toward matlrial comfort,which cannot really distract from anguish.

whereas ex,e may erode one's sense of identity, the thought of errantry -the thought of that which rerates - usuary reinforces this sense of identity. Itseems possibre, at reast to one observer, that the persecuted errantry, thewandering ofltheJews, may have reinforced their sense of identity far more thantheir present settring in the rand of parestine. Being exiled Jews turned into a

7 6 / / THEORETT:CAr FRAMEWORKS

voc.rtion of errantry, their point of reference an ideal land whose power may, infact, have been undermined by concrete land (a territory), chosen and conquered.'l'hls, however, is mere conjecture. Because, while one can communicate throughefmntry's imaginary vision, the experiences of exiles are incommunicable.

The thought of errantry is not apolitical nor is it inconsistent with the will toldentity, which is, after all, nothing other than the search for a freedom withinparticular surroundings. If it is at variance with territorial intolerance, or thepredatory effects of the unique root (which makes processes of identification soditTicult today), this is because, in the Poetics of Relation, one who is errant (whols uo longer traveller, discoverer or conqueror) strives to know the totality oftheworld yet already knows he will never accomplish this - and knows that isprecisely where the threatened beauty of the world resides.

Errant, he challenges and discards the universal - this generalizing edict thatsummarized the world as something obvious and transparent, claiming for it onepresupposed sense and one destiny. He plunges into the opacities of that part ofthe world to which he has access. Generalization is totalitarian: from the worldit chooses one side of the reports, one set of ideas, which it sets apart from othersand tries to impose by exporting as a model. The thinking of errantry conceivesof totality but willingly renounces any claims to sum it up or to possess it.

The founding books have taught us that the sacred dimension consistsalways of going deeper into the mystery of the root, shaded with variations ofermntry. In reality errant thinking is the postulation of an unyielding andunfading sacred. We remember that Plato, who understood the power of Myth,had hoped to banish the poets, those who force obscurity, far from the Republic.He distrusted the fathomless word. Are we not returning here, in theunforeseeable meanders of Relation, to this abyssal word? Nowhere is it statedthat noq in this thought of errantry, humanity will not succeed in transmutingMyth's opacities (which were formerly the occasion for setting roots) and thediffracted insights of political philosophy, thereby reconciling Homer and Plato,Hegel and the African griot.

But we need to figure out whether or not there are other succulencies ofRelation in other parts of the world (and already at work in an undergroundmanner) that will suddenly open up other avenues and soon help to correctwhatever simplifying, ethnocentric exclusions may have arisen flrom such aperspective. [...]

Dictate, Decree[... I Summarizing what we know concerning the varieties of identity, we arriveat the following:

Glisscni//Poetics of Relqtion//77

Root identity- is founded in the distant past in a vision, a myth of the creation of the world;- is sanctified by the hidden violence of a filiation that strictly follows from thisfounding episode;- is ratified by a claim to legitimacy that allows a community to proclaim itsentitlement to the possession of a land, which thus becomes a territory;- is preserved by being projected onto other territories, making theirconquest legitimate - and through the project of a discursive knowledge. Rootidentity therefore rooted the thought of self and of territory and set in motionthe thought of the other and of voyage.

Relation identity- is linked not to a creation of the world but to the conscious and contradictoryexperience of contacts among cultures;- is produced in the chaotic network of Relation and not in the hidden violenceof filiation;- does not devise any legitimacy as its guarantee of entitlement, but circulates,newly extended;- does not think of a land as a territory from which to project toward otherterritories but as a place where one gives-on-and-with rather than grasps.

Relation identity exults the thought of errantry and of totality. The shock ofrelating, hence, has repercussions on several levels. When secular cultures comeinto contact through their intolerances, the ensuing violence triggers mutualexclusions that are ofa sacred nature and for which any future reconciliation ishard to foresee. When a culture that is expressly composite, such as the cultureof Martinique, is touched by another (French) that 'entered into' its compositionand continues to determine it, not radically but through the erosion ofassimilation, the violence of reaction is intermittent and unsure of itself. For theMartinican it has no solid rootstock in any sacred territory or filiation. This,indeed, is a case in which specificity is a strict requirement and must be definedas closely as possible. For this composite culture is fragile in the extreme,wearing down through contact with a masked colonization. [... ]

Edouard Glissant, Po,tique de la Relation (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1990); trans. Betsy Wing, Poetics

of Relation [footnotes not included] (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 7997)'17-21t 143-4.

F6lix GuqttcrriChaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Parcdlgm/ / 1992

Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (1992) is the last book written byFrench psychoanalyst and philosopher Ftlix Guattari. ln it he turns to aesthetics as

the model for a new ethical behaviour opposed to capitalist rationality. For Gusttai,art is a process of 'becoming': a fluid and partially autonomous zone of activity thatworks against disciplinary boundaries, yet which is inseparable from its integrationh the social field. Chaosmosis is cn important reference for the final essay in NicolasB ourriaud's Relational Aesthetics.

[...] Artistic cartographies have always been an essential element of thel'ramework of every society. But since becoming the work of specializedcorporate bodies, they may have appeared to be side issues, a supplement of thesoul, a fragile superstructure whose death is regularly announced. And yet fromthe grottoes of Lascaux to Soho, taking in the dawn of the cathedrals, they havenever stopped being a vital element in the crystallization of individual andcol lective subjectivities.

Fabricated in the socius, art, however, is only sustained by itself. Thisis because each work produced possesses a double finality: to insert itselfinto a social network which will either appropriate or reject it, and to celebrate,once again, the Universe of art as such, precisely because it is always in dangerof collapsing.

What confers it with this perennial possibility of eclipse is its function oflupturing with forms and significations circulating trivially in the social field. Thenrtist and, more generally, aesthetic perception, detach and deterritorialize a

segment of the real in such a way as to make it play the role of a partial enunciator.Art confers a function of sense and alterity to a subset of the perceived world. Theconsequence of this quasi-animistic speech effect of a work of art is that thesubjectivity of the artist and the 'consumer' is reshaped. In short, it is a matter ofr.rrefying an enunciation which has too great a tendency to become entangled in aniclerrtificatory seriality which infantilizes and annihilates it. The work of art, forthose who use it, is an activity of unframing, of rupturing sense, of baroqueproliferation or extreme impoverishment, which leads to a recreation and a

rcinvention of the subject itself. A new existential support will oscillate on the workof art, based on a double register of reterritorialization (refrain function) andresingularization. The event of its encounter can irreversibly date the course of anexistence and generate fields of the possible'farfrom the equilibria'of everyday life.

Guattqri//Chqosmosis: An EthlcoAesthetic Pcradigm//7g78I/THEORETICAT FRAMEWORKS